It was as much the mystery as the horror that made the case of Margaret Clark (commonly known as Old Twentypercent) of such burning interest to the six daily journals of the town. I have been told that the feet of tireless young reporters wore a separate path up the bluff to the site of old Margaret’s abode; but this I question, because there were already two paths made for them by the feet of old Margaret’s customers—the winding path up the grassy slope, and the steps hewn out of the sheer yellow bluff-side, sliced down to make a backing for the street. These are the facts that, whichever the path taken, they were able to glean: Miss Margaret lived on the bluff in the western part of town. The street below crosses at right angles the street running to the river, which is of the kind the French term an “impasse.” It is a street of varied fortunes, beginning humbly in a wide and treeless plain, where jimson, dock, and mustard weed have their will with the grass, passing a number of houses, each in its own tiny yard, creeping up the hill and the social scale at the same time, until it is bordered by velvety boulevards and terraces and lawns that glow in the evening light, and pretty houses often painted; then dropping again to a lonely gully, with the flaming kilns of the brick-yard on one side, and the huge dark bulk of the brewery on the other, reaching at last the bustle and roar of the busiest street in town. The great arc-light swung a dazzling white porcupine above the brewery vats every night (when the moon did not shine), and hung level with the crest of the opposite bluff. By day or night one could see the trim old-fashioned garden and the close-cropped lawn and the tall bur-oaks that shaded the two-story brown cottage in which for fifteen years Margaret Clark had lived. Here she was living at the time of these events, with no protector except her bull-dog, the Colonel (who, to be sure, understood his business, and I cannot deny him a personal pronoun), and no companion except Esquire Clark, her cat. She did not keep fowls—judging it right and necessary to slay them on occasion, but never having the heart to kill anything for which she had cared and which she had taught to know her. Therefore she bought her eggs and her “frying chickens” of George Washington, a worthy colored man who lived below the hill, and who kept Margaret’s garden in order. Although he had worked for her (satisfactory service given for satisfactory wage) during all these fifteen years, he knew as little about her, he declared, as the first week he came. Nor did the wizened little Irishwoman who climbed the clay stairway three times a week to wash and scrub know any more. But she stoutly maintained “the old lady was a rale lady, and the saints would be good to her.” One reporter, more curious, discovered that Margaret several times had helped this woman over a rough pass.
The only other person (outside of her customers) who kept so much as a speaking acquaintance with Margaret was the sheriff, Amos Wickliff. And what he knew of her he was able to keep even from the press. As for the customers, her malicious nickname explains her business. Margaret was an irregular money-lender. She loaned money for short periods on personal security or otherwise. It should speak well for her shrewdness that she rarely made a bad debt. Yet she was not unpopular; on the contrary, she had the name of giving the poor a long day, and, for one of her trade, was esteemed lenient. Shortly after her accident, also (she had the ill-hap to fall down her cellar-way, injuring her spine), she had remitted a number of debts to her poorest debtors.
The accident occurred of a Wednesday morning; Wednesday afternoon her nephew called on her, having, he said, but just discovered her whereabouts. The reporters discovered that this nephew, Archibald Cary Allerton by name, was not an invited and far from a welcome guest, although he gave out that his mother and he were his aunt’s sole living kindred. She would not speak to him when he visited her, turning her head to the wall, moaning and muttering, so that it was but kindness to leave her. The nurse (Mrs. Raker, the jailer’s wife, had come up from the jail) said that he seemed distressed. He called again during the evening, after Wickliff, who spent most of the evening with her alone, was gone, but he had no better success; she would not or could not speak to him. Thursday morning she saw Amos Wickliff. She seemed brighter, and gave Amos, in the presence of the nurse, the notes and mortgages that she desired released. Thursday evening, about eight o’clock, Amos returned to report how he had done his commissions. He found the house flaming from roof-tree to sills! There was no question of his saving the sick woman. Even as he panted up the hill-side the roof fell in with a crash. Amos screamed to the crowd: “Where is she? Did you save her?” And the Irish char-woman’s wail answered him: “I wint in—I wint in whin it was all afire, and the fire jumped at me, so I run; me eyebrows is gone, and I didn’t see a sign of her!” Then Amos betook himself to Mrs. Raker, whom he found only after much searching; nor did her story reassure him. She was violently agitated between pity and shock, but, as usual, she kept her head on her shoulders and her wits on duty. She was not in the house when the catastrophe had happened. Allerton had come to see his aunt. He told the nurse that she might go to her sister, her sister’s child being ill, and that he would stay with his aunt. Wickliff was expected every moment. And the patient had added her word, “Do go, Mrs. Raker; it’s only a step; and take a jar of my plum jelly to Sammy to take his medicine in!” So Mrs. Raker went. She saw the fire first, and that not half an hour from the time she left the house. She saw it flickering in the lower windows. It was she sent her brother-in-law to give the alarm, while she ran swiftly to the house. The whole lower story was ablaze when she got up the hill. To enter was impossible. But Mrs. O’Shea, the char-woman, and she did find a ladder, and put it against the wall and the window of Miss Clark’s chamber, which window was wide open, and Mrs. Baker held the ladder while Mrs. O’Shea, who was of an agile and slimmer build, clambered up the rounds to look through the smoke, already mixed with flame. And the room was empty. Amos at once had the neighborhood searched, hoping that Allerton had conveyed his aunt to a place of safety. There was no trace of either aunt or nephew. But Amos found a boy who confessed (after some pressure) that he had been in Miss Margaret’s yard, in the vineyard facing her room. He had been startled by a kind of rattling noise and a scream. Involuntarily he cowered behind the vines and peered through at the house. The windows of Miss Clark’s room were closed, or maybe one was open very slightly; but suddenly this window was pushed up and Allerton leaned out. He knew it was Allerton by the square shoulders. He did not say anything, only turned his head, looking every way. The boy thought it time to run. He was clear of the yard and beginning to descend the bluff, when he looked back and saw Allerton running very swiftly through the circle of light cast by the electric lamp. All the reporters examined the lad, but he never altered his tale. “Mr. Allerton looked frightened—he looked awful frightened,” he said.
Amos was on the point of sending to the police, when Allerton himself appeared. The incredible story which he told only thickened the suspicions beginning to gather about him.
He said that he had found his aunt disinclined to talk. She told him to go into the other room, for she wished to go to sleep; and although he had matters of serious import to discuss with her, he could not force his presence on a lady, and he obeyed her. He went into the adjoining room, and there he sat in a chair before the door. The door was the sole means of exit from the bedchamber. The two rooms opened into each other by the door; and the second room, in which Allerton sat, had a door into a small hall, from which the staircase led down-stairs. Allerton was ready to swear to his story, which was that he had sat in the chair before the door until he heard a singular muffled scream from the other room. Instantly he sprang up, opened the door, and ran into the other room. The bed was opposite the door. To his terror and amazement, the bed was empty, the room was empty. He ran frantically round the room, and then flung up the window, looking out; but there was nothing to be seen. Moreover, the room was twenty feet from the ground, nor was there so much as a vine or a lightning-rod to help a climber. It was past believing that a decrepit old woman, who could not turn in bed alone, should have climbed out of a window and dropped twenty feet to the ground. Besides, there was the boy watching that side of the house all the time. He had seen nothing. But where was Margaret Clark? The chief of police took the responsibility of arresting Allerton. Perhaps he was swayed to this decisive step by the boy’s testimony being in a measure corroborated by a woman of unimpeachable character living in the neighborhood, who had heard screams, as of something in mortal pain or fear, at about the time mentioned by the boy. She looked up to the house and was half minded to climb the steps; but the sounds ceased, the peaceful lights in the house on the hill were not disturbed, and, chiding her own ears, she passed on.
The fire broke out a little later, hardly a quarter of an hour after Allerton went away. This was established by the fact that the boy, who ran at the top of his speed, had barely reached home before he heard the alarm-bells. The flames seemed to envelop the whole structure in a flash, which was not so much a matter of marvel as other things, since the house was of wood, and dry as tinder from a long drought.
It was possible that Allerton was lying, and that while he and the boy were gone the old woman had discovered the fire and painfully crawled down-stairs and out of the burning house; but, in that case, where was she? How could a feeble old woman thus vanish off the face of the earth? The next day the police explored the ruins. They half expected to find the bones of the unfortunate creature. They did not find a shred of anything that resembled bones. If Allerton had murdered his aunt, he had so contrived his crime as to destroy every vestige of the body; and granting him a motive to do such an atrocious deed, why should so venturesome and ingenious a murderer jeopard everything by a wild fairy tale? The reporters found themselves before a blank wall.
“Maybe it ain’t a fairy tale,” Amos Wickliff suggested one day, two days after the mystery. He was giving “the boys” a kind word on the court-house steps.
“It’s to be hoped it is a true story,” said the youngest and naturally most hardened reporter, “since then he’ll die with a better conscience!”
“They never can convict him on the evidence,” interrupted another man. “I don’t see how they can even hold him.”
“That’s why folks are mad,” said the youngest reporter, with a pitying smile.
“There’s something in the talk, then?” said Amos, shifting his cigar to the other side of his mouth.
“Are they going to lynch that feller?” asked another reporter.
“Say so,” the first young man remarked, placidly; “a lot of the old lady’s chums are howling about stringing him up. They’ve the notion that she was burned alive, and they’re hot over it.”
“That’s your paper, old man; you had ’most two columns, and made it out Mrs. Kerby heard squealing after the boy did; and pictured the horrible situation of the poor old helpless woman writhing in anguish, and the fire eating nearer and nearer. Great Scott! it made me crawl to read it; and I saw a crowd down-town in the park, and if one fellow wasn’t reading your blasted blood-curdler out loud; and one woman was crying and telling about the old party lending her money to buy her husband’s coffin, and then letting her off paying. That made the crowd rabid. At every sentence they let off a howl. You needn’t be grinning like a wild-cat; it ain’t funny to that feller in jail, I bet. Is it, Amos?”
“You boys better call off your dogs, if you can get ’em,” was all the sheriff deigned to answer, and he rose as he spoke. He did not look disturbed, but his placid mask belied him. Better than most men he knew what stormy petrels “the newspaper boys” were. And better than any man he knew what an eggshell was his jail. “I’d almost like to have ’em bust that fool door, though,” he grimly reflected, “just to show the supervisors I knew what I was talking about. I’ll get a new jail out of those old roosters, or they’ll have to get a new sheriff. But meanwhile—” He fell into a perplexed and gloomy reverie, through which his five years’ acquaintance with the lost woman drifted pensively, as a moving car will pass, slowly revealing first one familiar face and then another. “I suppose I’m what the lawyers would call her next friend—hereabouts, anyhow,” he mused, “and yet you might say it was quite by accident we started in to know each other, poor old lady!” The cause of the first acquaintance was as simple as a starved cat which a jury of small boys were preparing to hang just under the bluff. Amos cut down the cat, and almost in the same rhythm, as the disciples of Delsarte would say, cuffed the nearest executioner, while the others fled. Amos hated cats, but this one, as if recognizing his good-will (and perhaps finding some sweet drop in the bitter existence of peril and starvation that he knew, and therefore loath to yield it), clung to Amos’s knees and essayed a feeble purr of gratitude. “Well, pussy,” said Amos, “good-bye!” But the cat did not stir, except to rub feebly again. It was a black cat, very large, ghastly thin, with the rough coat of neglect, and a pair of burning eyes that might have reminded Amos of Poe’s ghastly conceit were he not protected against such fancies by the best of protectors. He could not remember disagreeably that which he had never read. “Pussy, you’re about starved,” said Amos. “I believe I’ve got to give you a stomachful before I turn you loose.”
“I’ll give the kitty something to eat,” said a voice in the air.
Amos stared at the clouds; then he whirled on his heel and recognized both the voice, which had a different accent and quality of tone from the voices that he was used to hear, and the little, shabby, gray-headed woman who was scrambling down to him.
“‘I’LL GIVE THE KITTY SOMETHING TO EAT’”
“Will you?” exclaimed Amos, in relief, for he knew her by repute, although they had never looked each other in the face before. “Well, that’s very nice of you, Miss Clark.”
“I’ll keep him with pleasure, sir,” said the old woman. “I’ve had a bereavement lately. My cat died. She was ’most at the allotted term, I expect, but so spry and so intelligent I couldn’t realize it. I couldn’t somehow feel myself attracted to any other cat. But this poor fugitive—— Come here, sir!”
To Amos’s surprise, the cat summoned all its forces and, after one futile stagger, leaped into her arms. A strange little shape she looked to him, as she stood, with her head too large for her emaciated little body, which was arrayed in a coarse black serge suit, plainly flotsam and jetsam of the bargain counter, planned for a woman of larger frame. Yet uncouth as the woman looked, she was perfectly neat.
“I’m obliged to you for saving the poor creature,” she said.
“I’m obliged to you, ma’am, for taking it off my hands,” said Amos. He bowed; she returned his bow—not at all in the manner or with the carriage to be expected of such a plain and ill-clad presence. Amos considered the incident concluded. But a few days later she stopped him on the street, nervously smiling. “That cat, sir,” she began in her abrupt way—she never seemed to open a conversation; she dived into it with a shiver, as a timid swimmer plunges into the water—“that cat,” said she, “that cat, sir, is a right intelligent animal, and he has pleased the Colonel. He’s so fastidious I was afraid, though I didn’t mention it; but they are very congenial.”
“I’m glad they’re friendly,” says Amos; “the Colonel would make mince-meat of an uncongenial cat. What do you call the cat?”
“I couldn’t, on account of circumstances, you know, call him after my last cat, Miss Margaret Clark, so I call him Esquire Clark. He knows his name already. I thank you again, sir, for saving him. I just stopped you so as to tell you I had a lot of ripe gooseberries I’d be glad to have you send and pick.”
“Why, that’s good of you,” said Amos. “I guess the boys at the jail would like a little gooseberry sauce.”
She nodded and turned round; the words came over her shoulder: “Say, sir, I expect you wouldn’t give them jam? It’s a great deal better than sauce, and—I don’t mind letting you have the extra sugar.” Amos was more bewildered than he showed, but he thanked her, and did, in fact, come that afternoon with a buggy. The first object to greet him was the large white head and the large black jaws of the Colonel, chained to a post. Amos, who is the friend of all dogs, and sometimes has an uninvited following of stray curs, gave the snarling figure-head a nod and a careless greeting: “All right, young feller. Don’t disturb yourself. I’m here, all proper and legal. How are you?” The redoubtable Colonel began to wag his tail; and as Amos came up to him he actually fawned on him with manifestations of pleasure.
“I guess he’s safe to unloose, ma’am,” said Amos.
Old Twentypercent was looking on with a strange expression. “He likes you, sir; I never saw him like a stranger before.”
“Well, most dogs like me,” said Amos. “I guess they understand I like them.”
“I reckon you’re a good man,” said Old Twentypercent, solemnly. From this auspicious beginning the acquaintance slowly but steadily waxed into a queer kind of semi-friendship. Amos always bowed to the old woman when he met her on the street. She sent the prisoners in the jail fruit every Sunday during the season; and Amos, not to be churlish, returned the courtesy with a flowering plant, now and then, in winter. But he never carried his gifts himself, esteeming that such conduct would be an intrusion on a lady who preferred a retired life. Esquire Clark, however, was of a social turn. He visited the jail often. The first time he came Amos sent him back. The messenger, Mrs. Raker, was received at the door, thanked warmly, sent away loaded with fruit and flowers, but not asked over the threshold, which made Amos the surer that he was right in not going himself. Nevertheless, he did go to see Miss Clark, but hardly on his own errand. A carpenter in the town, a good sort of thriftless though industrious creature, came to Amos to borrow some money. He explained that he needed it to pay interest on a debt, and that his tools were pledged for security. The interest, he mourned, was high, and the debt of long standing. The creditor was Old Twentypercent.
“It’s a shame I ’ain’t paid it off before, and that’s a fact,” he concluded; “but a feller with nine children can’t pay nothing—not even the debt of nature—for he’s ’fraid to die and leave them. And the blamed thing’s been a-runnin’ and a-runnin’, like a ringworm, and a-eatin’ me up. Though my wife she says we’ve more’n paid her up in interest.” Amos had an old kindness for the man, and after a visit to his wife—he holding the youngest two of the nine (twins) on his knees and keeping the peace with candy—he told the pair he would ask Miss Clark to allow a third extension, on the payment of the interest.
“Well, but I don’t know’s he’s even got that,” said the wife, anxiously. “We’d a lot of expenses; I don’t s’pose we’d orter had the twins’ photographs taken this month, but they was so delicate I was ’fraid we wouldn’t raise ’em; and Mamie really couldn’t go to school without new shoes. Children’s a blessing, I s’pose, but it’s a blessing poor folks had got to pay for in advance!”
“So!” says Amos. “Well, we’ll have to see to that much, I guess. I’ll go this night.” He betook himself to his errand in a frame of mind only half distasteful. The other half was curious. His visit fell on a summer night, a Sunday night, when the air was soft and still and sweet with the tiny hum of insects and the smell of drying grass and the mellow resonance of the church-bells. Amos climbed the clay stairs. The white porcupine blazed above the bluffs. It gave light enough to see the color of the grass and flowers; yet not a real color, only the ghost of scarlet and green and white, and only a ghost of the violet sky, while all about the devouring shadows sank form and color alike in their olive blacks. The stars were out in the sky and the south wind in the trees. Amos stepped across the lawn—he was a light walker although a heavy-weight—and stopped before the front door, which had long windows on either side. He had his arm outstretched to knock; but he did not knock, he stood and watched the green holland shade that screened the window rise gradually. He could see the room, a large room, uncarpeted, whereby the steps of the inmate echoed on the boards. He could see a writing-desk, a table, and four or five chairs. These chairs were entirely different from anything else in the room; they were of pretty shape and extremely comfortable. Immediately the curtain descended at a run, and the old woman’s voice called, “You’re a bad cat; don’t you do that again!” The voice went on, as if to some one present: “Did you ever see such a trying beast? Why, he’s almost human! Now, you watch; the minute I turn away from that window, that cat will pull up the shade.” It appeared that she was right, for the curtain instantly rolled up again. “No, honey,” said Miss Clark, “you mustn’t encourage the kitty to be naughty. ’Squire, if I let that curtain stay a minute, will you behave!” A dog’s growl emphasized this gentle reproof. “You see the Colonel disapproves. Don’t pull the dog’s tail, honey. Oh, mercy! ’Squire!” Amos heard a crash, and in an instant a flame shot up in a cone; and he, with one blow dislodging the screen from the open window, plunged into the smoke. The cat had tipped over the lamp, and the table was in a blaze. Amos’s quick eye caught sight of the box which served Esquire for a bed. He huddled feather pillow and rug on the floor to invert the box over the blaze. The fire was out in a moment, and Margaret had brought another lamp from the kitchen. Then Amos had leisure to look about him. There was no one in the room. Yet that was not the most pungent matter for thought. Old Margaret, whom he had considered one of the plainest women in the world, as devoid of taste as of beauty, was standing before him in a black silk gown. A fine black silk, he pronounced it. She had soft lace about her withered throat, and a cap with pink ribbons on her gray hair, which looked silvery soft. Her skin, too, seemed fairer and finer: and there were rings that flashed and glowed on her thin fingers. It was not Old Twentypercent; it was a stately little gentlewoman that stood before him. “How did you happen to come, sir?”—she spoke with coldness.
“I came on an errand, and I was just at the door when the curtain flew up and the cat jumped across the table.”
She involuntarily caught her breath, like one relieved; then she smiled. “You mustn’t be too hard on ’Squire; he’s of a nervous temperament; I think he sees things—things outside our ken.”
Meanwhile Amos was unable not to see that there had been on the table a tumbler full of some kind of shrub, four glasses, and a decanter of wine. And there had been wine in all the glasses. But where were the drinkers? There were four or five plates on the table, and a segment of plum-cake was trodden underfoot on the floor. Before she did anything else, old Margaret carefully, almost scrupulously, gathered up the crumbs and carried them away. When she returned she carried a plate of cake and a glass of wine. This refreshment was proffered to Amos.
“It’s a domestic port,” she said, “but well recommended. I should be right glad to have you sit down and have a glass of wine with me, Mr. Sheriff.”
“Perhaps you mayn’t be so glad when you hear my errand,” said Amos.
She went white in a second, and her fingers curved inward like the fingers of the dying; she was opening and shutting her mouth without making a sound. He had seen a man hanged once, and that face had worn the same ghastly stare of expectation.
“If you knew I was come to beg off one of your debtors, for instance,” he went on; “that’s my errand, if you want to know.”
Her face changed. “It will go better after a glass of wine,” said she, again proffering the wine by a gesture—she didn’t trust her hand to pass the tray.
Amos was a little undecided as to the proper formula to be used, never having taken wine with a lady before; he felt that the usual salutations among “the boys,” such as “Here’s how!” or “Happy days!” or “Well, better luck next time!” savored of levity if not disrespect; so he grew a little red, and the best he could do was to mumble, “Here’s my respects to you, madam!” in a serious tone, with a bow.
But old Margaret smiled. “It’s a long while,” said she, “since I have taken wine with a—a gentleman outside my own kin.”
“Is that so?” Amos murmured, politely. “Well, it’s the first time I have had that pleasure with a lady.” He was conscious that he was pleasing her, and that she was smiling about her, for all the world (he said to himself) as if she were exchanging glances with some one. A new idea came to him, and he looked at her compassionately while he ate his cake, breaking off bits and eating it delicately, exactly as she ate.
She offered him no explanation for the wineglasses or for the conversation that he had overheard. He did not hear a sound of any other life in the house than their own. The doors were open, and he could see into the bedroom on one side and into the kitchen on the other. She had lighted another lamp, enabling him to distinguish every object in the kitchen. There was not a carpet in the house, and it seemed impossible that any one could be concealed so quickly without making a sound.
Amos shook his head solemnly. “Poor lady!” said he.
But she, now her mysterious fright was passed, had rallied her spirits. Of her own motion she introduced the subject of his errand. “You spoke of a debtor; what’s the man’s name?”
Amos gave her the truth of the tale, and with some humor described the twins.
“Well, I reckon he has more than paid it,” she said at the end. “What do you want? Were you going to lend him the money?”
“Well, only the interest money; he’s a good fellow, and he has nine children.”
“Who have to be paid for in advance?” She actually tittered a feeble, surprised little laugh, as she rose up and stepped (on her toes, in the prim manner once taught young gentlewomen) across the room to the desk. She came back with a red-lined paper in her meagre, blue-veined hand. She handed the paper to Amos. “That is a present to you.”
“Not the whole note?”
“Yes, sir. Because you asked me. You tell Foley that. And if he’s got a dog or a cat or a horse, you tell him to be good to it.”
This had been a year ago; and Amos was sure that Foley’s gratitude would take the form of a clamor for revenge. Mrs. Foley dated their present prosperity entirely from that day; she had superadded a personal attachment to an impersonal gratitude; she sold Miss Clark eggs, and little Mamie had the reversion of the usurer’s shoes. Amos sighed. “Well, I can’t blame ’em,” he muttered. From that day had dated his own closer acquaintance.
He now occasionally paid a visit at the old gentlewoman’s home. Once she asked him to tea. And Raker went about for days in a broad grin at the image of Amos, who, indeed, made a very careful toilet with his new blue sack-coat, white duck trousers, and tan-colored shoes. He told Raker that he had had a delightful supper. Mrs. O’Shea, the char-woman, was without at the kitchen stove, and little Mamie Foley brought in the hot waffles and jam. Esquire Clark showed his gifts by vaulting over the grape-arbor, trying to enter through the wire screen, bent on joining the company, and the Colonel wept audibly outside, until Amos begged for their admission. Safely on their respective seats, their behavior, in general, was beyond criticism. Only once the Colonel, feeling that the frying chicken was unconscionably long in coming his way, gave a low howl of irrepressible feeling; and Esquire Clark (no doubt from sympathy) leaped after Mamie and the dish.
“’Squire, I’m ashamed of you!” cried Miss Clark; “Archie, you know better!” Amos paid no visible attention to the change of name; but she must have noticed her own slip, for she said: “I never told you the Colonel’s whole name, did I? It’s Colonel Archibald Cary. I’d like you never to mention it, though. And ’Squire Clark is named after an uncle of mine who raised me, for my parents died when I was a little girl. Clark Byng was his name, and I called the cat by the first part of it.”
Amos did not know whether interest would be considered impertinent, so he contented himself with remarking that they were “both pretty names.”
“Uncle was a good man,” said Miss Clark. “He was only five feet four in height, but very fond of muscular games, and a great admirer of tall men. Colonel Cary was six feet two. I reckon that’s about your height?”
“Exactly, ma’am,” said Amos.
She sighed slightly; then turned the conversation to Amos’s own affairs.
An instinct of delicacy kept him from ever questioning her, and she vouchsafed him no information. Once she asked him to come and see her when he wanted anything that she could give him. “I’m at home to you every day, except the third of the month,” said she. On reflection Amos remembered that it was on the third that he had paid his first visit to Miss Clark.
“Well, ma,” he remarked, walking up and down in front of his mother’s portrait in his office, as his habit was, “it is a queer case, ain’t it? But I’m not employed to run the poor old lady to cover, and I sha’n’t let any one else if I can help it.”
Had Amos been vain, he would have remarked the change in his singular friend since their friendship had begun. Old Margaret wore the decent black gown and bonnet becoming an elderly gentlewoman. She carried a silk umbrella. The neighbors began to address her as “Miss Clark.” Amos, however, was not vain, and all he told his mother’s picture was that the old lady was quality, and no mistake.
By this time, on divers occasions, she had spoken to Amos of her South Carolina home. Once she told him (in a few words, and her voice was quiet, but her hands trembled) of the yellow-fever time on the lonely plantation in the pine woods, and how in one week her uncle, her brother and his wife, and her little niece had died, and she with her own hands had helped to bury them. “It was no wonder I didn’t see things all right after that,” she said. Another time she showed him a locket containing the old-fashioned yellow photograph of a man in a soldier’s uniform. “He was considered very handsome,” said she. Amos found it a handsome face. He would have found it so under the appeal of those piteous eyes had it been as ugly as the Colonel’s. “He was killed in the war,” she said; “shot while he was on a visit to us to see my sister. He ran out of the house, and the Yan—your soldiers shot him. It was the fortune of war. I have no right to blame them. But if he hadn’t visited our fatal roof he might be living now; for it was in the very last year of the war. I saw it. I fell down as if shot myself—better if I had been.”
“Well, I call that awful hard,” said Amos; “I should think you would have gone crazy!”
“Oh no, sir, no!” she interrupted, eagerly. “My mind was perfectly clear.”
“But how you must have suffered!”
“Yes, I suffered,” said she. “I never thought to speak of it.”
A week after this conversation her nephew came. The day was September 3d. Nevertheless, on that Wednesday night she summoned Amos. He had been out in the country; but Mrs. Raker had heard through little Minnie Foley, who came for some crab-apples and found Miss Clark moaning on the cellar floor. The jail being but a few blocks away, Mrs. Raker was on the scene almost as soon as George Washington. By the time Amos arrived the two doctors had gone and Miss Clark was in bed, and the white bedspread or white pillows under her head were hardly whiter than her face.
“Mrs. Raker’s making some gruel,” said she, feebly, “and if you’ll stay here I have something to say. It’s an odd thing, you’ll think,” she added, wistfully, when he was in the arm-chair by her bed (it was one of the chairs from the other room, he noticed)—“an odd thing for a miserable old woman with no kin and no friends to be loath to leave; but I’m like a cat, I reckon. It near tore my soul up by the roots to leave the old place, and now it’s as bad here.”
“Don’t you talk such nonsense as leaving, Miss Clark,” Amos tried to console her. But she shook her head. And Amos, recalling what the doctors said, felt his words of denial slipping back into his throat. He essayed another tack. “Don’t you talk of having no friends here either. Why, poor Mrs. O’Shea has blued all my shirts that she was washing, so they’re a sight to see—all for grief; and little Mamie Foley ran crying all the way down the street.”
“The poor child!”
“And why are you leaving me out?”
“I don’t want to leave you out, Mr. Sheriff—”
“Oh, say Amos when you’re sick, Miss Clark,” he cried, impulsively; she seemed so little, so feeble, and so alone.
“You’re a kind man, Amos Wickliff,” said she. “Now first tell me, would you give the Colonel and ’Squire a home as long as they need it?”
Amos gave an inward gasp; but it may be imputed to him for righteousness some day that there was only an imperceptible pause before he answered, “Yes, ma’am, I will; and take good care of them, too.”
“Here’s something for you, then; take it now.” She handed him a large envelope, sealed. “It’s for any expenses, you know. And—I’ll send ’em over to-morrow.”
He took the package rather awkwardly. “Now you know you have a nephew—” he began.
“I know, and I know why he’s here, too. And in that paper is my will; but don’t you open it till I’m dead a month, will you?”
Amos promised in spite of a secret misgiving.
“And now,” she went on, in her nervous way, “I want you to do something right kind for me—not now—when Mrs. Raker goes; she’s a good soul, and I hope you’ll give her the envelope I’ve marked for her. Yes, sir, I want you to do something for me when she’s gone. Move in the four chairs from down-stairs—the pretty ones—all the rest are plain, so you can tell; and fetch me the tray with the wineglasses and the bottle of shrub—you’ll find the tray in the buffet with the red curtains down-stairs in my office. Then you go into the kitchen—I feel so sorry to have to ask a gentleman to do such things, but I do want them—and you’ll see a round brown box with Cake marked on it in curly gilt letters, and you’ll find a frosted cake in there wrapped up in tissue-paper; and you take it out, and get a knife out of the drawer, and fetch all those things up to me. And then, Amos Wickliff, all the friend I’ve got in the world, you go and stay outside—it ain’t cold or I wouldn’t ask it of you—you stay until you hear my bell. Will you?”
Amos took the thin hand, involuntarily outstretched, and patted it soothingly between both his strong brown hands.
“Of course I will,” he promised. And after Mrs. Raker’s departure he did her bidding, saying often to himself, “Poor lady!”
When the bell rang, and he came back, the wineglasses and the decanter were empty, and the cake was half gone. He made no comment, she gave him no explanation. Until Mrs. Raker returned she talked about releasing some of her debtors.
The following morning he came again.
“I declare,” thought Amos, “when I think of that morning, and how much brighter she looked, it makes me sick to think of her as dead. She had been doing a lot of things on the sly, helping folks. It was her has been sending the money for the jail dinner on Christmas, and the ice-cream on the Fourth, and books, too. ‘It’s so terrible to be a prisoner,’ says she. Wonder, didn’t she know? I declare I hate her to be dead! Ain’t it possible—Lord! wouldn’t that be a go?” He did not express even to himself his sudden flash of light on the mystery. But he went his ways to the armory of the militia company, the office of the chief of police (which was the very next building), and to the fire department. At one of these places he wrote out an advertisement, which the reporters read in the evening papers, and found so exciting that they all flocked together to discuss it.
All this did not take an hour’s time. It was to be observed that at every place which he visited he first stepped to the telephone and called up the jail. “Are you all right there, Raker?” he asked. Then he told where he was going. “If you need, you can telephone me there,” he said.
“I guess Amos isn’t taking any chances on this,” the youngest reporter, who encountered him on his way, remarked to the chief of police.
The chief replied that Amos was a careful man; he wished some others would be as careful, and as sure they were right before they went ahead; a good deal of trouble would be avoided.
“That’s right,” said the reporter, blithely, and went his lightsome way, while the chief scowled.
Amos returned to the jail. He found the street clear, but little knots of men were gathering and then dispersing in the street facing the jail. Amos thought that he saw Foley’s face in the crowd, but it vanished as he tried to distinguish it. “No doubt he’s egging them on,” muttered Amos. He was rather taken aback when Raker (to whom he offered his suspicions) assured him, on ear evidence, that Foley was preaching peace and obedience to the law. “He’s an Irishman, too,” muttered Amos; “that’s awful queer.” He spent a long time in a grim reverie, out of which he roused himself to despatch a boy for the evening papers. “And you mark that advertisement, and take half a dozen copies to Foley”—thus ran his directions—“tell him I sent them; and if he knows anybody would like to read that ‘ad,’ to send a paper to them. Understand?”
“Maybe it’s a prowl after a will-o’-wisp,” Amos sighed, after the boy was gone, “but it’s worth a try. Now for our young man!”
Allerton was sitting in his cell, in an attitude of dejection that would have been a grateful sight to the crowd outside. He was a slim-waisted, broad-shouldered, gentle-mannered young fellow, whose dark eyes were very bright, and whose dark hair was curly, and longer than hair is usually worn by Northerners not studying football at the universities. He had a mildly Roman profile and a frank smile. His clothes seemed almost shabby to Amos, who never grudged a dollar of his tailor’s bills; but the little Southern village whence he came was used to admire that glossy linen and that short-skirted black frock-coat.
At Amos’s greeting he ran forward excitedly.
“Are they coming?” he cried. “Say, sheriff, you’ll give me back my pistol if they come; you’ll give me a show for my life?”
Amos shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “Your life’s all right,” said he; “it’s how to keep from hurting the other fellows I’m after. The fire department will turn out and sozzle ’em well, and if that won’t do they will have to face the soldiers; but I hope to the Lord your aunt won’t let it come to that.”
“Do you think my aunt is living?”
“I don’t see how she could be burned up so completely. But see here, Mr. Allerton, wasn’t there no trap-door in the room?”
“No, sir; there was no carpet on the floor; she hadn’t a carpet in the house. Besides, how could she, sick as she was, get down through a trap-door and shut it after her? And you could see the boards, and there was no opening in them.”
“So Mrs. O’Shea says, too,” mused the sheriff; “but let’s go back. Had your aunt any motive for trying to escape you?”
“I’m afraid she thought she had,” said the young man, gravely.
“Mind telling me?”
“No, sir. I reckon you don’t know my aunt was crazy?”
“I’ve had some such notion. She lost her mind when they all died of yellow-fever—or was it when Colonel Cary was killed?”
“I don’t know precisely. I imagine that she was queer after his death, and all the family dying later, that finished the wreck. There were some painful circumstances connected with the colonel’s death—”
“I’ve heard them.”
“Yes, sir. Well, sir, my mother was not to blame—not so much to blame as you may think. She was almost a stranger to her sister, raised in another State; and she had never seen her or Colonel Cary, her betrothed; and when she did see him—well, sir, my mother was a beautiful, daring, brilliant girl, and poor Aunt Margaret timid and awkward. She broke the engagement, not Cary.”
“It was to see your mother he came to the plantation!”
“Yes, sir. And he was killed. Poor Aunt Margaret saw it. She came back to the house riding in a miserable dump-cart, holding his head in her lap. She wouldn’t let my mother come near him. ‘Now he knows which loved him best,’ she said ‘He’s mine!’ And it didn’t soften her when my mother married my father. She seemed to think that proved she hadn’t cared for Colonel Cary. Then the yellow-fever came, and they all went. Her mind broke down completely then; she used to think that on the day Colonel Cary was shot they all came back for a while, and she would set chairs for them and offer them wine and cake—as if they were visiting her. And after they left she would pour the wine in the glasses into the grate and burn the cake. She said that they enjoyed it, and ate really, but they left a semblance. She got hold of some queer books, I reckon, for she had the strangest notions; and she spent no end of money on some spiritual mediums; greedy harpies that got a heap of money out of her. My father and mother had come to Cary Hall, then, to live, and of course they didn’t like it. The great trouble, my mother often said to me, was that though they were sisters, they were raised apart, and were as much strangers as—we are. You can imagine how they felt to see the property being squandered. Ten thousand dollars, sir, went in one year—”
“Are you sure it did go?” said the sheriff.
“Well, the property was sold, and we never saw anything afterwards of the money. And the estate wasn’t a bottomless well. It isn’t so strange, sir, that—that they had poor Aunt Margaret cared for.”
“At an insane asylum?”
“Yes, sir, for five years. I confess,” said the young man, jumping up and pacing the room—“I confess I think it was a horrible place, horrible. But they didn’t know. It was only after she recovered her senses and was released that we began to understand what she suffered. Not so much then, for she was shy of us all. She was so scared, poor thing! And then—we began to suspect that she was not cured of her delusions. Maybe there were consultations and talk about her, though indeed, sir, my mother has assured me many times that there was no intention of sending her back. But she is very shrewd, and she would notice how doors would be shut and the conversation would be changed when she entered a room, and her suspicions were aroused. She managed to raise some money on a mortgage, and she ran away, leaving not a trace behind her. My mother has reproached herself ever since. And we’ve tried to find her. It has preyed upon my mother’s mind that she might be living somewhere, poor and lonely and neglected. We are not rich people,” said the young man, lifting his head proudly, “but we have enough. I come to offer Aunt Margaret money, not to ask it. We’ve kept up the place, and bit by bit paid off the mortgage, though it has come hard sometimes. And it was awkward the title being in that kind of shape, and ma wouldn’t for a long time get it quieted.”
“But how did you ever find out she was here?”
The young Southerner smiled. “I reckon I owe being in this scrape at all to your gentlemen of the press. One of them wrote a kind of character-sketch about her, describing her—”
“I know. He’s the youngest man on the list, and an awful liar, but he does write a mighty readable story.”
“He did this time,” said Allerton, dryly; “so readable it was copied in the papers all over, I expect; anyhow, it was copied in our local sheet—inside, where they have the patent insides, you know. It was entitled ‘A Usurer, but Merciful!’ I showed it to my mother, and she was sure it was Aunt Margaret. Even the name was right, for her whole name is Margaret Clark Cary. She hadn’t the heart to cast the name away, and she thought, Clark being a common name, she wouldn’t be discovered.”
Amos, who had sat down, was nursing his ankle. “Do you suppose,” said he, slowly—“do you suppose that taking it to be the case she wasn’t so much hurt as the doctors supposed, that then she could get out of the room?”
“I don’t see how she could. She was in the room, in the bed, when I went out. I sat down before the door. She couldn’t pass me. I heard a screech after a while, a mighty queer sound, and I ran in. Sir, I give you my word of honor, the bed was empty! the room was empty!”
“How was the room lighted?”
“By a large lamp with a Rochester burner, and some fancy of hers had made her keep it turned up at full blaze. Oh, you could see every inch of the room at a glance! And then, too, I ran all round it before I ran to the window, pushed it up, and looked out. I would be willing to take my oath that the room was empty.”
“You looked under the bed?”
“Of course. And in the closet. I tell you, sir, there was no one in the room.”
Amos sat for the space of five minutes, it seemed to the young man, really perhaps for a full minute, thinking deeply. Then, “I can’t make it out,” said he, “but I believe you are telling the truth.” He stood up; the young man also rose. In the silence wherein the younger man tried to formulate something of his gratitude and yet keep his lip from quivering (for he had been sore beset by homesickness and divers ugly fears during the last day), the roar of the crowd without beat through the bars, swelling ominously. And now, all of an instant, the jail was penetrated by a din of its own making. The prisoners lost their heads. They began to scream inquiries, to shriek at each other. Two women whose drunken disorder had gone beyond the station-house restraints, and who were spending a week in jail, burst into deafening wails, partly from fright, partly from pity, and largely from the general craving of their condition to make a noise.
“Never mind,” said Amos, laying a kindly hand on young Allerton’s shoulder, “the Company B boys are all in the yard. But I guess you will feel easier if you go down-stairs. Parole of honor you won’t skip off?”
“Oh, God bless you, sir!” cried Allerton. “I couldn’t bear to die this way; it would kill my mother! Yes, yes, of course I give my word. Only let me have a chance to fight, and die fighting—”
“No dying in the case,” Amos interrupted; “but what in thunder are the cusses cheering for? Come on; this needs looking into. Cheering!”
He hurried down the heavy stairs into the hall, where Raker, a little paler, and Mrs. Raker, a little more flushed than usual, were examining the bolts of the great door.
Amos flung a glare of scorn at it, and he snorted under his breath: “Locks! No need of locking You! I could bust you with the hose!”
As if in answer, the cheering burst forth anew, and now it was coupled with his name: “Wickliff! Amos! Amos!”
“Let me out!” commanded Wickliff, and he slipped back the bolts. He stepped under the light of the door-lamp outside, tall and strong, and cool as if he had a Gatling gun beside him.
A cheer rolled up from the crowd—yes, not only from the crowd, but from the blue-coated ranks massed to one side, and the young faces behind the bayonets.
Amos stared. He looked fiercely from the mob to the guardians of the law. Then, amid a roar of laughter, for the crowd perfectly understood his gesture of bewilderment and anger, Foley’s voice bellowed, “All right, sheriff; we’ve got her safe!”
They tell to this day how the iron sheriff, whose composure had been proof against every test brought against it, and whom no man had ever before seen to quail, actually staggered against the door. Then he gave them a broad grin of his own, and shouted with the rest, for there in the heart of the rush jailward, lifted up on a chair—loaned, as afterwards appeared (when it came to the time for returning), from Hans Obermann’s “Place”—sat enthroned old Margaret Clark; and she was looking as if she liked it!
They got her to the jail porch; Amos pacified the crowd with free beer at Obermann’s, and carried her over the threshold in his arms.
He put her down in the big arm-chair in his office, opposite the portraits of his parents, and Esquire Clark slid into the room and purred at her feet, while Mrs. Raker fanned her. It was rather a chilly evening, the heat having given place to cold in the sudden fashion of the climate; but good Mrs. Raker knew what was due to a person in a faint or likely to faint, and she did not permit the weather to disturb her rules. Calmly she began to fan, saying meanwhile, in a soothing tone, “There, there, don’t you worry! it’s all right!”
Raker stood by, waiting for orders and smiling feebly. And young Allerton simply gasped.
“You were at Foley’s, then?” Amos was the first to speak—apart from Mrs. Raker’s crooning, which, indeed, was so far automatic that it can hardly be called speech; it was merely a vocal exercise intended to quiet the mind. “You were at Foley’s, then?” says Amos.
“Yes, sir,” very calmly; but her hands were clinching the arms of the chair.
“And you saw my advertisement in this evening paper?”
“Yes, sir; Foley read it out to me. You begged M. C. C. to come back and help you because you were in great embarrassment and trouble—and you promised me nobody should harm me.”
“No more nobody shall!” returned Amos.
“But maybe you can’t help it. Never mind. When I heard about how they were talking about lynching him”—she indicated her nephew—“I felt terrible; the sin of blood guiltiness seemed to be resting on my soul; but I couldn’t help it. Mr. Sheriff, you don’t know I—I was once in—in an insane asylum. I was!”
“That’s all right,” said Amos. “I know all about that.”
“There, there, there!” murmured Mrs. Raker, “don’t think of it!”
“It wasn’t that they were cruel to me—they weren’t that. They never struck or starved me; they just gave me awful drugs to keep me quiet; and they made me sit all day, every day, week in, week out, month in, month out, on a bench with other poor creatures, who had enough company in their horrible dreams. If I lifted my hands there was some one to put them down to my side and say, in a soft voice, ‘Hush, be quiet!’ That was their theory—absolute rest! They thought I was crazy because I could see more than they, because I had visitors from the spirit-land—”
“I know,” interrupted Amos. “I was there one night. But I—”
“You couldn’t see them. It was only I. They came to me. It was more than a year after they all died, and I was so lonely—oh, nobody knows how desolate and lonely I was!—and then a medium came. She taught me how to summon them. At first, though I made all the preparations, though I put out the whist cards for uncle and Ralph and Sadie, and the toys for little Ro, I couldn’t seem to think they were there; but I kept on acting as if I knew they were there, and having faith; and at last they did come. But they wouldn’t come in the asylum, because the conditions weren’t right. So at last I felt I couldn’t bear it any longer. I felt like I was false to the heavenly vision; but I couldn’t stand it, and so I pretended I didn’t see them and I never had seen them; and whatever they said I ought to feel I pretended to feel, and I said how wonderful it was that I should be cured; and that made them right pleased; and they felt that I was quite a credit to them, and they wrote my sister that I was cured. I went home, but only to be suspected again, and so I ran away. I had put aside money before, thousands of dollars, that they thought that I spent. They thought I gave a heap of it to that medium and her husband; I truly only gave them five hundred dollars. So I went forth. I hid myself here. I was happy here, where they could come, until—until I saw Archibald Allerton on the street and overheard him inquiring for me. I was dreadfully upset. But I decided in a minute to flee again. So I drew some money out of the bank, and I bought a blue calico and a sun-bonnet not to look like myself; and I went home and wrote that letter I gave you, Mr. Sheriff, with my will and the money.”
“The parcel is unopened still,” said Amos. “I gave you my word, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I knew you would keep your word. And it was just after I wrote you I slipped down the cellar stairs. It came of being in a hurry. I made sure I never would get on my feet again, but very soon I discovered that I was more scared than hurt. And I saw then there might be a chance of keeping him off his guard if he thought I was like to die, and that thus I might escape the readier. It was not hard to fool the doctors. I did just the same with them I did with the asylum folks. I said yes whenever I thought they expected it, and though I had some contradictory symptoms, they made out a bad state of things with the spine, and gave mighty little hope of my recovery. But what I hadn’t counted on was that my friends would take such good care of me. I didn’t know I had friends. It pleased me so I was wanting to cry for joy; yet it frightened me so I didn’t know which way to turn.”
“But, great heavens! Aunt Margaret,” the young Southerner burst out, unable to restrain himself longer, “you had no need to be so afraid of me!”
The old woman looked at him, more in suspicion than in hope, but she went on, not answering: “The night I did escape, it was by accident. I never would say one word to him hardly, though he tried again and again to start a talk; but I would seem too ill; and he’s a Cary, anyhow, and couldn’t be rude to a lady. That night he went into the other room. He was so quiet I reckoned he was asleep, and, thinking that here might be a chance for me, I slipped out of bed, soft as soft, and slipped over to the crack of the door—it just wasn’t closed!—and I peeked in on him—”
“And you were behind the door when he heard the noise?” exclaimed Amos. “But what made the noise?”
“Oh, I reckon just ’Squire jumping out of the window; he gave a kind of screech.”
“But I don’t understand,” cried Allerton. “I went into the room, and it was empty.”
“No, sir,” said Miss Cary, plucking up more spirit in the presence of Wickliff—“no, sir; I was behind the door. You didn’t push it shut.”
“But I ran all round the room.”
“No, sir; not till you looked out of the window. While you were looking out of the window I slipped out of the door; and I was so scared lest you should see me that I wasn’t afraid of anything else; and I got down-stairs while you were looking in the closet, and found my clothes there, and so got out.”
“But I was sure I went round the room first,” cried Allerton.
“Very likely; but you see you didn’t,” remarked Amos.
“It was because I remembered stubbing my toe”—Allerton was painfully ploughing up his memories—“I am certain I stubbed my toe, and it must have been going round the—no; by—I beg your pardon—I stubbed it against the bed, going to the window. I was all wrong.”
“Just so,” agreed Amos, cheerfully. “And then you went to Foley, Miss Cary. Trust an Irishman for hiding anybody in trouble! But how did the house catch fire? Did you—”
But old Margaret protested vehemently that here at least she was sackless; and Mrs. Raker unexpectedly came to the rescue.
“I guess I can tell that much,” said she. “’Squire came back, and he’s got burns all over him, and he’s cut with glass bad! I guess he jumped back into the house and upset a lamp once too often!”
“I see it all,” said Amos. “And then you came back to rescue your nephew—”
“No, sir,” cried Margaret Cary; “I came back because they said you were in trouble. It’s wicked, but I couldn’t bear the thought he’d take me back to the crazies. I’m an old woman; and when you’re old you want to live in a house of your own, in your own way, and not be crowded. And it’s so awful to be crowded by crazies! I couldn’t bear it. I said he must take his chance; and I wouldn’t read the papers for fear they would shake my resolution. It was Foley read your advertisement to me. And then I knew if you were in danger, whatever happened to me, I would have to go.”
Amos wheeled round on young Allerton. “Now, young fellow,” said he, “speak out. Tell your aunt you won’t touch a hair of her head; and she may have her little invisible family gatherings all she likes.”
Allerton, smiling, came forward and took his aunt’s trembling hand. “You shall stay here or go home to your sister, who loves you, whichever you choose; and you shall be as safe and free there as here,” said he.
And looking into his dark eyes—the Cary eyes—she believed him.
The youngest reporter never heard the details of the Clark mystery, but no doubt he made quite as good a story as if he had known the truth.